Clockwork Condor

A flier that erodes itself as a cost of doing its job. The printed 0/0 body is a bluff: the three +1/+1 counters make it a 3/3 in the air the turn it lands, but committing it to combat (attacking or blocking) strips a counter once the dust settles, so it shrinks to a 2/2, then a 1/1, then takes one final swing before the last counter peels off and it falls over. This is the recurring Clockwork design from the early years of the game: an evaporating beater whose clock runs in two directions at once, threatening the opponent while counting down its own existence. The counter framing is the load-bearing part, because once the size sits on a permanent as counters rather than baked into a static line, that size becomes something to move, double, or replenish. Any effect that adds +1/+1 counters resets the timer, and the Bird stops being a three-swing fuse and becomes a renewable evasive body. That gap between the literal mechanism (a wind-up toy losing its tension) and what the counter substrate can do in the hands of cards built to manipulate counters is the whole reason a four-mana flier with no static keywords beyond evasion earns a second look.